


Holding Out For You

by candiedbonemarrow



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: M/M, erikar - Freeform, no Karkat is not actually gonna kick Eridan's ass, this is after the events of Eridan's pesterquest route
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22277116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candiedbonemarrow/pseuds/candiedbonemarrow
Summary: Karkat is gonna kick Eridan's ass for whatever stunt he pulled with Sollux
Relationships: Eridan Ampora/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 13
Kudos: 47





	1. Home Alone

It certainly has been quite a while since he last saw anyone.

He's tried talking to Feferi, but after Sollux got done throwing a fucking shopping mall at his ass, she blocked him, which is, understandable. The little white character spent the rest of the day with him and then they were off to do the next thing, as people like them do, of course. He really thought they had a connection, too; he tried to reach them on Trollian later, thinking they'd have stayed friends. Ignored. Also fine and fair. Not a problem, it's okay. They're probably too busy to get to him. All of his other friends, at this point, probably hate him, and since he can't really go anywhere on Alternia without feeling the public scorn, and his airship is completely destroyed, he has decided that maybe his hive is where he's going to stay for the next few sweeps. Serves him right. It was his fault he got his airship demolished in the first place, and this is ample punishment for everything else, too, though the rest of it will come when he's eventually forced to leave the planet and conquer for Alternia, where he'll most likely be killed by another Alternian ship looking to take him out.

A perigree, since he had to swim all the way back over. His lusus flew off somewhere and hasn't been back since (he can't blame his dad for that either, who would want to spend two minutes with him?) Plenty of big sea creatures hunting him, which gave him a bite to eat, though he didn't come out unscathed. No, he won't elaborate on that. It's not really about that, right now. Right now he's alone, in a broken-down hive, the cracks so big the current nearly rips him from it every time it crashes over him. He can't keep the water out anymore, and until he gets a new airship, this is what he's got to handle. That's fine. It's all fine. He's used to it.

The first waves of the rebellion were small, but the ripples continue onward, and so, war on Alternia is bound to begin within the next sweep. He can't choose neutrality, and he doesn't want to. He just, wishes it wasn't coming. It's not the right time, they'll all get squashed like the grubs they are, they don't have the planning skills or the resources or anything an Alternian adult might have. They decided not to wait, and they're moving on with or without him. Not like they invited him in the first place. It's fine. It's, fine.

He's lucky he's still got delivery out to his house or he'd have nothing to eat right now. No monsters within radius have decided to pick a fight with him lately, no fresh meat, and even if he wanted some he'd have to at least drop off a meal for Feferi's lusus, which he can't do until his dad is back or he's got an airship, and since his commission is taking long and his dad might never be back anyway, they might all die here before he can even get her lusus some food. Damn, he works his whole life busting ass for this planet and it's all about to go to waste. He flings the fridge open and grabs his leftover smoothie from this morning and chugs it down without so much as a breath of pause. He can't taste it. Burnt his tongue a while ago and it still hasn't healed back. He wishes he could, it's got pineapple in it, which he thought would be enough to bring his tastebuds back to life. Disappointed, but not surprised. And as he makes his way across the soggy floor of his hive, his leg buckles underneath him, sending him to his knees.

It burns. It burns so bad he crumples into a ball for a minute or two, thankful that his smoothie is safely contained in a blender bottle and that it’s not all over the rotting wood. He’s not sure what he did to it. He doesn’t want to look at it. He wishes he didn’t feel it, right now, but it’s not like he has much of a say in what he does and doesn’t want for himself when he’s already made such a mess of things. Everything in pieces, and he’ll have to go and gather them into his little wicker basket, and then he’ll have to lay it out before him like a puzzle and take the rest of his life to put it together again. He might not live that long. Someone might just come and kill him during all of the rioting. That’s, fine. It’s not, but he should at least pretend it is, so that when it comes he can say he made peace with it long ago.

He stretches, extends his limbs in every direction, and decides that hey, the floor isn’t so bad, actually, and he can just, deal with being here. If he stands on his leg again he can and will go down, so it’s more worth it to sink into the spongy wood and become one with the rot. The rot, the damp, the quiet of the evening sea, and yet there’s the daylight, searing into his eyes from above, bound to burn him alive if he stays put. Still he stays, still he’ll be, spread onto his wooden baking sheet and plopped in the oven to be cooked to a crisp. It might be worth it if, for once, he knew what it was like to not feel so cold.

It's too cold.

He has no more blankets; they blew out in the last storm, and now all he's got is pillows and whatever clothes he's got in his closet. His cape is barely scraps, and since he hasn't gotten the chance to make a new one... well. He might not get another one, considering. And that's fine. It's fine. Nothing's wrong. Nothing's ever wrong, never, except for him. He's wrong.

Who is he holding out for?

Why is he still here? Here, on the sopping wet floor of his ship, alone and tired and in pain and if he just, closes his eyes, just a little nap, maybe he'll wake up in a different place, and he'll have at least one person next to him, even if it's to nag at him endlessly about all the things he's doing wrong. Someone, one person. One.

... Karkat. If he had to pick, but he doesn't get a choice, does he?

One, little nap, and so he takes a deep breath that hits the floor of his lungs and his eyes flutter shut.


	2. Why Is It So Damn Dark Here? I Thought I Was Nocturnal...?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wish that title was a line of dialogue in this chapter, and so do I, but here we are. Starved of that dialogue piece. Go figure.

Muggy air, sodden, spongy floorboards, waterlogged lightbulbs that flicker in the dim lighting; three things off of the long list of structural and electrical engineering horrors of this god abandoned, absolutely unethical excuse for a hive. Locking his door, while normally a safe, meritable choice, is completely rendered useless by the giant fucking _hole_ in the side of whatever compromised makeshift rig he's made for himself, and that hole has enough wiring exposed to hit every pulse point it might please to. The ship, so hollow, old and sunken, brimming with its own thick, sticky fog more wet than the sea that surrounds his pathetic little island, collects frost that spikes outward but crumbles so easily at the touch of his stiffened finger, knuckles cracking as he pulls his soaked sweater closer to his body. He has to get dry. Warm-blooded as he is, he's already taken a few dives into the ocean (where he unceremoniously flailed around until scooped up by Gamzee's lanky, but sufficiently long arms,) and he doesn't usually get enough nutrition to build up enough insulation to go out during colder fall days, let alone winter.

His breath fogs his vision, clings to his already stinging cheeks. "Hey, Gamzee, I know it's kind of shit to ask since you already gave me a ride here," he's still disgusted that his dad only comes around if there's other trolls present at the hive (not wanting to get caught in purposeful neglect, huh? Bastard,) and he's not sure if his dad will even stay long enough to give Gamzee a ride home, which was why he was hoping-

... Ugh. And there he goes, relying on a branch that might not hold, for someone on the outside to come and soothe the twisting, hollow ache in his gut, untie his knotted stomach full of bile, and acid, and _worry._ After losing his _own_ hive, and having to supplement his loss by staying with Dave (who he actually has no opinion on, but John is sweet, even if he's infuriating) and even Gamzee in the meantime, he's surprised to see that he didn't _actually_ have it bad for shelter. He wonders if, if he, was given any building drones at all, if somehow-

But that's ridiculous. Even KARKAT had building drones. Someone with as high a caste as he had would have NEVER been looked over or abandoned by the system, and with his title, in addition-

He's pulled out of it, his stupid little cloud thoughts, bogged by the moisture, when his elbow starts _sinking into the sponge-like wall, which also **crunches** as he breaks the frost layer. _Seeking to remedy his lack of footing on the floor, he attempts to push himself OFF the wall, only to _,_ somehow, _bring a soggy chunk of molded, sponged wood with him, as the cold causes it to cling to his skin._ There's not much his stiff fingers can do to try and get it off and the worry is weighing so much heavier on him, now, unless he's sinking into the floor, too. Was it always like this? Did he ever plan on telling anyone? Did he TRY to tell someone, and did they simply brush him off, as they usually do, or make fun of him, take a gun loaded with their bullets cast of all things malice and fire? Or-

Why, why is his mind CUTTING HIM OFF? Why is it so hard to FOCUS on looking two steps ahead of himself or making a map of the room like he knows he should be and why, why is it so hard to breathe? His shivering is starting to impede his careful strides and he wonders if he'll ever find some form of warmth in here that isn't a fire hazard or wet blankets. If he has to touch a wet blanket in THIS frozen slime pen he might just turn around and never set foot in here again.

... And that's exactly what _he,_ should have done, and what Karkat suspects he did, before _it,_ happened.

He will never let Sollux forget that dropping malls on people is not equivalent punishment for being an annoyance, whether mild or at its very extreme, and if that means yelling at him for a few hours and then having him make a concrete plan (with dates, mind you,) to REMEDY that threat to life and safety, on his own, and then refusing to talk to him until it is made, then that's exactly what Karkat will do and not even Her Imperious Condescension can come down and rip that from his hands, alive or dead.

Which, begs the question, one he never thought he would have to ask himself, and oh, how that feeds the pain in his gut;

_Where is he?_

And that applies to TWO living beings here, not just one, because there should definitely be one angry lusus, if he's remembering right. He did say he had one...

"Careful bro, he's layin' right underneath your feet," a very kind word of warning, but far too late, as Karkat, still disoriented from his long journey across the ocean, trips over dead weight and barrels toward the ground. Gamzee's able to loop his arms underneath his elbows before he hits the floorboards (thank you, Gamzee, yet again,) though he doesn't stop him from making contact with the huddled form underneath him, which,

call Karkat a bit batshit nuts, if you will- shouldn't be this cold, nor this slimy, if he's right. He's convinced grabbing freezer-burnt covered ice cream from the container with his bare hands is a better idea than touching his palms to the surface of his skin and pressing that to the soft flesh of his stomach, or laying his cheek to the surface of an ice mound, and as he dares to pull away, some of the older skin on his palm is ripped off and, presumably, is frozen to the outer layer of whatever the _hell_ it is he's barely hovering over.

This is not how he imagined this moment in the slightest.

Gamzee tugs a few times to signal to Karkat that he's ready to pull him up, tugs that Karkat couldn't even register if he tried to right now. Palms, still hovering over the surface of his discovery, register no change in air flow, no movement. It's not that he minds Gamzee's touch, but it is _certainly_ inhibiting his arm movements and at the wave of his right forearm Gamzee lets his elbows drop free so that Karkat can check him freely. His gut twists in slick, fuzzy knots, heavy with bubbles the longer he doesn't feel _anything_ but cold. There can't be _nothing._ He didn't just haul his ass over here on someone else's lusus a month or two after he, lost his own, to find out that he's lost something else-

There, _there._ Silent, feeble breaths, airflow so faint he almost didn't notice it, coming from just above his upper lip. A mass uncurls itself in his gut, leaves his body in the form of a strained, heavy sigh, Karkat collapsing to wrap the freezing body underneath him, in his arms the best he can manage. Karkat thought he was small, but this...? Frail as Gamzee's starved body the day he met him, small enough to actually _fit_ in Karkat's own form, which, from what Karkat's learned in the past month or two, is the shortest of any troll his friends have ever met, with the exception of three people. Is this even him?

There's a part of Karkat that hopes it isn't, but if that were the case, he'd have to search for a while longer, and judging from the temperature here, he doesn't think he can afford to waste time on that. He meant to ask Gamzee about something regarding temperature a bit ago but I mean fuck that idea, right? Who can focus on that when he's too busy figuring out if his best- ... his friend, is even in his hive.

His question is answered when there's stirring from beneath him, the tiniest of shudders as his head tilts to bury itself in Karkat's far-warmer shoulder.

"Gamzee?"

"Oh, uh, yeah Karkat?"

"Help me get him off the floor so we can take him back home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why was this so short? I don't know, I intended for it to go differently than this and for longer, but I guess that'll just have to be the next chapter. Why did it take eight months? Every answer I could give you is way too long, so I'm just gonna say that life's been shit. Thank you for being patient with me, I hope I can update this in the next month or two instead of in fuck knows how long. Next time Eridan will be awake, as a treat.


End file.
